Redemption (Rated T) - A Pirate/Fleet RP

[Fraze]

For several seconds, Fraze found himself lost in thought. This happened quite often.
He realized he had only started laughing out of embarrassment. Well, and anger--that mercenary was the last person who should have been giving a lecture about romance on the battlefield. It was either laughter or extreme violence, and he had chosen laughter.

His thoughts were interrupted as a voice spoke in his ear. It sounded nervous.
"Leraye is a champion for the oppressed. You have no proof that he would ever betray us."
Well, on the one hand, Fraze was rather surprised that any message had come at all. On the other hand, he wasn't the least bit surprised that they hadn't believed him. After all, if it were that easy, the attack wouldn't have happened in the first place.
At the least, he now knew what frequency they were communicating on, and their location. So, he responded on that specific frequency--talking quietly in the demons' office rather than shouting throughout the entire building, to use an earlier metaphor.
"Tell me. What has he done for you? Why do you hold him as a hero? I know much of what he has done, and none of it has been for the betterment of anyone but himself."
This was the best argument Fraze could find, questioning their motives. He wanted to say something like "You already attacked us, four hours ago and five hours from now. Leraye used this attack to try to escape, not giving a darn about any of you, but then his gem went haywire and screwed up time, so now we already know what he's going to do." But he had a sneaking suspicion they might not believe that.

Something soft and compact landed on his shoulder, and he saw a flash of dark blue out of the corner of his eye.
"'ey, any chance you can divide that blob-suit of yours between us?" Bloody Mary asked in a surprisingly deep voice. "The medics here should be able to patch you up no problem whatever happens to you, and you might even get a nice tragic-slash-heroic hit-on-battlefield scene out of it that way, but when a little meepit gets squished by demons, he tends to stay squished, s'what I'm saying."
"Uh," Fraze answered. He had never tried such a thing before--and, in fact, didn't know if it was possible. So he went straight to the source, and asked the suit what would happen.
The suit wasn't sentient. It was aware of its surroundings, both external conditions and the conditions of the wearer, but more in the way that a computer gathers data than in the way a human being percieves things. Similarly, it was capable of complex computations and analysis of situations, and could come up with solutions based on its own equipment--but lacked the ingenuitive spark that marks the thoughts of truly sapient beings.
Nonetheless, when asked "Can you split off a part of yourself to cover someone else? What are the risks, what could and couldn't this split part do?" it processed the question and came up with an answer surprisingly quickly.
"Yes," Fraze answered. "But unless you want to remain attached to me--which doesn't sound like a particularly pleasant option for either of us--you'll have to deal with a downgraded version. You'll still get all the normal functions of this armor--regular protection, crash and impact protection, all that stuff. But you won't be able to do the invisibility thing, and you won't be able to recharge the suit's battery. Which means once the power supply runs out, what you're wearing won't give a whole lot more protection than your average tin can-type armor. The computer will kind of be there, enough to protect you from something that you can't react to right away. And you'll be able to communicate directly with me, but no one else."
Most of this was true. But an invisible meepit might have been a bad idea, so while the cloak could technically have transferred over, Fraze decided it would be better not to give Bloody Mary that particular functionality. Besides, he was small enough that he could hide pretty easily. The part about communicating was also a bit of a partial truth--Fraze didn't think that allowing a meepit to jam up the 'Fleet's comm systems would do much good for him personally.

"So, if you're ready," Fraze began, and laid one finger on Bloody Mary's head. Part of the suit flowed down over the meepit, as though he had a bucket of mercury poured over his head. It was a somewhat comical show--b the time the process was completed, it looked as though Fraze had a meepit-shaped tumor on his fingertip. Or perhaps Bloody Mary had a human-shaped tumor on his head.

"That should be it. How's it feel?"

[Rider]

[glow=red,2,300]"Tell me. What has he done for you? Why do you hold him as a hero? I know much of what he has done, and none of it has been for the betterment of anyone but himself."

It was gonna be like arguing with a religious nut.

"You humans know nothing of what Leraye has done. I'd give you a lesson, but it's a waste on a dead man."

A pause while Kyvr discussed things with the High Warmaster in a whisper.

"I'll tell you what. If you release Leraye unharmed, then we will let you live... for now."

Kyvr's show of bravado was just as much for the troops as for Fraze.

---

Meanwhile, Ventratta had left Rider's pocket and was searching for the missing members of the crew. He had tried to ask Rider's permission first, but she seemed too distracted by things that go boom.

"Wait a minute... that's Goosh?"

'tratta had about the same reaction.

Thankfully, sparkly bishies had about the same effect on 'tratta as a picture of cute captioned kittens would have on, say, a rabid bear.

He clambered onto a nearby table and squeaked in an effort to get Zylaa's attention. Using a nurse's pen on a clipboard, he started drawing on some poor schmuck's med chart. A few stick figures with horns, a few guns, and a clock that read... about ten minutes from now. [/glow]

[Cyborg]

Cyborg, once again was following Keng around the maze of a HQ. " Keng, these lasers. Is there any I could mount onto my arms? Or are they all gun-like?" he asked. " Will they be strong enough to take care of the demons? Oh, and one last thing. Is there anywhere I can find some rocks to work with? I only have one."

[Kengplant]

"We have an eco-dome I think that should have some rocks and other stuff: just don't uplift the whole thing. Most of the weapons will be gun type stuff. We haven't exactly got time for mounting things onto your arms anyways. Plus we'd just have to take them off afterwards." explained Keng before taking a sharp corner, then another one, then coming to a sudden and abrupt stop without much warning. There were two guards and a fair bit of obviously present security devices they couldn't be bothered to hide, as well as quite a few hidden ones.

Keng spoke quickly to them, so quickly she was amazed that they'd understood her at all when they gave her a curt nod and one stepped aside to let her enter her access code.

"You'll all wait out here while these two fine gentle-soldiers-" one was a woman, " -and I pass out weapons. Just tell em what you want and they'll do their best to get it for you: within a reasonable limit. That's right, I'm not giving all you louts rocket launchers or anything of the sort."

The door swung open with much whirring and clicking and beeping after numerous code punchings, key turnings from the guards, and eye and hand scans.

"Let's start with some shielding." Keng laid a bunch of strange looking things on the ground. They appeared to be handles disembodies from whatever they were supposed to be attached to. Keng slipped one over her arm, then demonstrated how to turn it on. There was an impressive VWOOM as the shield expanded out into a large, partial dome. The forcefield it was made of was perfectly see-through. "These are a lot like the forcefield Rider ran into earlier: in other words don't touch em but feel free to hit enemies with them. They'll protect you from a lot more than any traditional shields. They have a long power supply and even under constant intense use it'll take a year for them to run out. These are all fully charged. Everyone should grab one. I know they're more to the fighting style of the Knights but I know you guys value your lives enough to not mind hiding behind some protection. And yes, now the fun part. Line up for your weapons."

[Cyborg]

" After this, I'll need to go to the ecodome. And don't worry, I'll just need some rocks, maybe a little plant life. Not too much." Cyborg explained. " Okay, no wrist mounted guns, darn. Nice shields though." Cyborg slipped on the shield. " Impressive. Now guns, hmm. Do you have some sort of crossbow, with maybe plasma darts? If not I'll take a plasma pulse gun."

Nameless guard number one grabbed the cross bow and darts. " Don't break the darts, it would be really dangerous. The bow should be fine, made of the strongest metals." he stated.

" Sounds good, now Keng if you don't mind, could you direct me to the eco dome?" Cyborg asked taking the weapons.

[Amneiger]

((*is late beyond late*))

"Ethan, you're over there? Okay, never mind. How about - "

Then Amneiger had stopped and listened to what was going on with the other pirates and Fraze.

Huh. Normally I'd wonder if she was just lying, except the other Pirates hadn't seemed to expect that and look like they believe her.

Then he'd listened a bit more to what the demons were saying.

Motives. Motives...their motive is to find Leraye and get him out of here. How to remove that?

We have information they do not know, while they do not know anything we do not know. Foreknowledge. Therefore we can control what happens here.

"Fraze, we need to prove to them that we know what we're talking about. Tell them that we found out what they were doing with Speck and have already captured her." Get rid of their motives... "See if you can get them to talk about bit more about what they think Leraye helped them with." What next, what next?

"Keng, the demons didn't seem to be wearing any kind of armor or environmental protection last time they were here. Do we have any grenades or flash bangs? And I think they had some kind of shield around them; I'd check what it did, but the tapes are either missing or gone."

[Huntress]

Bloody Mary sunk lower on Fraze's shoulder with, well, the closest sound to squeaking he'd ever made. The skinsuit didn't feel pleasant. Actually it felt downright claustrophobic. Not to mention it made him feel like someone was standing right behind him. And in front of him, and on either side.

He looked around.

"That should be it. How's it feel?"

"Bad," the meepit said earnestly. "Might take a while. Thank you." He paused. "Now there's just this one little issue..."

A hand tapped Fraze on the other shoulder. Hunty had caught up and now pointed down, at her feet that were surrounded by a dark blue carpet that was currently looking up with many big, blinking, anticipating eyes.

"He did say 'us'," she said, not even trying to hide a grin. "Anarchy and all. Equality. Bloody Mary doesn't have any more rights to skinsuit as any other given meepit."

There was more blinking. It seemed to be mostly focused on Bloody Mary, however. The silvermeepit looked back at them.

"Problem here being," he said, his voice a bit absent since he was still mostly focused on getting used to his new surroundings that apparently also wanted to share new info with him. It was a lot like the time he'd first caught rabies and learnt to deal with it, except external. "Problem being, if you all got a piece of this, the guy himself is gonna go half-naked."

"Humans do that on battlefields a lot," a voice from the meepitcrowd pointed out.

"Humans also die on battlefields a lot," said Bloody Mary. That was true. That was why they'd never understood the logic of prancing around in rags on battlefields. When you were on a battlefield and unlucky enough to have lost your armor, you didn't grab a flag and climb on top of a pile of bodies to yell out defiant warcries to the enemies. You sneaked around avoiding everyone until you found some dead guy with an armor you could make use of.

The anticipating blinking toned down, then promptly refocused as they reached the armoury. The blue carpet spread out to sniff around and evaluate anything that could count as useful. Hunty eyed Keng's demonstration-shield in the meantime.

"Ooh, I have one of these," she said. "Technically." She fidgeted, feeling the crossbow strapped to her back and wondering if it'd pay to just leave it here, considering that it probably wouldn't do much good against demons, then decided against it. You'll never know. "I'll just have one of these shield-thingies and something to shoot with. Bloody Mary?"

"Mrm?"

"You hereby count as a ranged weapon."

"Neat." The meepit grinned under the skinsuit.

The captain looked up from a pile of something that looked vaguely like nuclear-powered wrenches. "Alright, gents. How much time do we have? I know ominous foreboding when I see it, and I know that it always snaps eventually, and our ominous foreboding has been growing tense enough to play Stairway to Heaven on it. Anyone got an update? We're sorta humble pirates here and whatnot. We don't have ways for seeing through walls."

[Rider]

[glow=red,2,300]"I'm not so much a fan of Stairway. I request Freebird," Rider said as she examined the biggest gun she could find. "Looks like a fair shot. Now what's this doo-hickey do?"

Leraye was weighing his options carefully. As far as he knew, the demons would only probably kill him. The humans and thier company most definitely would. However, the demons had more power.

... Power which could be twisted as well as any.

"Captain, consider this."

it was a huge risk, but then again, wasn't everything he did?

"You don't really want a burden like me accompanying you planetside, do you? After all, I am an enormous liability. And probably a bigger strain on your provisions than you can afford right now, as you've spent this past month chasing me and not doing your usual plundering. Now, if you hand me over to the demon-fleet, you can wash your hands of any responsibility for me. And heaven knows what will happen to me there. I mean, you can tell them that they killed me, locked me away forever, and who's to say you'd be wrong? After all, demons can sniff out lies as easily as a human, perhaps more so... and if you're wrong, well, who can blame you? With your swift decision-making, you saved the Spacefleet, and perhaps hundreds of 'Fleeters. After all, in the heat of battle, who knows what can happen." His eyes drifted pointedly towards Fraze.

"Well, what will it be, Captain? War in the Fleet, all for your petty revenge? Or will you be sensible and give them what they want?"[/glow]

[Kengplant]

"The eco-dome is actually kinda out of the way..." Keng told Cyborg "... but there are shops close to the cafeteria that should sell stuff you could use. The gardening ones especially. I'll cover their costs. Oh! or the souvenir shop! It sells moon rocks for cheap. They're a big seller... I'm not sure why.. they're just rocks.. anyways, they have a big stock of them. Would those work?"

and then Leraye spoke.

"Oh look, he's acting selfless. How sweet." Keng rolled her eyes in regards to his proposal. "For all we know he is working with the demons and collaborating with them to take over or destroy 'fleet. Besides, I don't see why a pack of angry, power hungry demons would even consider just leaving us alone once they get what they want. If they were that sort they'd have asked us nicely to please hand him over BEFORE they started shooting. The fleet is a powerful resource, and would give them a great boost in power if they were to take it over. I'd advise against handing him over unless as a last resort. We're not there yet." She reasoned.

[Cyborg]

"Moon rocks would be wonderful. Could you take me to these shops? I think they would be powerful enough. And the gardening, what do they sell there? Like what kinds of plants, I might be able to make great use of them." Cyborg asked.

[Huntress]

((Fair warning: the following post will contain some situation-induced godmoding on the basis of Jina not having posted for well over a month, and some blatant cheesy references I should be long banned from making and will probably one day get sued for. This has been a public service announcement.))

"You tell them."

"Why should I tell them? You tell them."

"I'm the senior officer here. You tell them."

"You're the senior officer, so you can go ahead and tell them."

"Well, someone's gotta tell them."

"Good, so you tell them."

There were two of them, trudging down a hallway in the reluctant manner of soldiers having been sent on a mission of very questionable safety - which was, in fact, the case. More specifically, this was a mission of taking a confiscated object to senior officers. Which was, in fact, the problem.

"Well, tecnic'ly this is good news, innit?" the senior officer said hesitantly. "We have con-fess-cated an apparently important and strongly magical item from a thief. We're now taking this to a group of officers directly concerned with it. End of story, they can worry about it, we'll get pats on our backs for a job well done and mebbe a good word in our files. Right?"

"Right," said the other. "Except that bit about there being another political force present who might also want the strongly magical item."

"Right."

"And both sides are likely to shoot us if we don't hand it to them."

"Right." This came very gloomily.

"Only I thought messengers weren't s'posed to be shot."

"Yeah, well, I always thought they only say that for messengers to let their guard down."

The meepits had turned their heads and perked up. Hunty, not having a comparable set of ears, was paying more attention to Leraye. She was scowling.

"Well, what will it be, Captain? War in the Fleet, all for your petty revenge? Or will you be sensible and give them what they want?"

"I'm not aiming for any petty revenge," she said. "I only want redemption. To be able to sail the seas again without having to fear each and every black pirate ship on the horizon."

Except that they indeed hadn't had much time for sailing recently. It'd been a blind goose-chase after someone who could've squished their entire ship and crew with the blink of an eye, since the loss of his gem at the time they'd found him had been purely by a lucky coincidence. Their provisions were indeed running low, especially with having to feed Cyborg - and the prospect of taking Leraye along on another goose-chase to find Rane's big schooner that, as he was a pirate, could be anywhere on the planet. And first and foremost, the entire chase had left a bad taste in her mouth from the start. They were pirates. Disregarding everything else and running a nearly suicidal errand to buy their way out of the wrath of... well, a very well-equipped fleet, but then again, weren't they running from well-equipped fleets all the time? Why were they doing this anyway? Why were they bending over backwards only because they'd acted like pirates in the first place? Why were they risking the wrath of these hi-tech moonpeople to get that done? Why was she risking Fr-

Look, she said to her brain, if this is how you're gonna behave, I'll stop using you and just do something stupid. Which I believe has already been done plenty today, so high time to act sensible, dontchathink?

As far as she was concerned, her revenge on Leraye had been taken care of with that one solid whack back at the medical ward. It didn't pay to chase some big payback. He betrays you, you punt him, scores settled. She'd never held with killing anyway. A dead enemy won't know that you had your revenge on him. She'd only done it with Cyborg because that's what the laws said about mutiny. Other than that, an enemy who stayed alive to remember the payback was worth a lot more.

It was unsure where her musings would've ended up on those tracks if a polite, somewhat nervous cough from a nearby hallway hadn't interrupted them.

There were two soldiers, both standing to terrified, overeager attention. The bigger and apparently senior one belonged to a species that seemed to consist mostly of a big belly and a small jovial-looking - if currently red-faced and sweaty - head somewhere on top of it. The smaller one was... well, any linguistic skills trying to describe him would soon give up, settle for 'vaguely humanoid' and go have a strong drink. He definitely wasn't a monkey, though. The primates would've invented a democracy solely to vote him out of the category.

"We, um." The senior officer fidgeted. They'd played rock-paper-scissors a short while back and he'd lost. Now he was unsure who to address, and also felt that he should be diplomatic towards the pirates, who all looked pretty intimidating, so he settled for a general desperate stare at nobody in particular. "Security caught the monkey you requested to be caught, sah, and this was confiscated from him, sah, and we, um, brought it here," he finished flatly and held up a somewhat flipper-ish hand that held-

-the black gem.

All of a sudden, a new scenario appeared in Hunty's head. It didn't come with the clicking of a lightbulb or the sound of a big angelic choir, but it should have.

She glanced at the fleeters present.

"If we're to hand Leraye over to the demons," she said, "we're very likely to get out of this without bloodshed. But for me to give up my rightful claim to his head, I... kindly request to have that gem in return."

[Kengplant]

Keng's instinctive reaction once the gem came into view was to firmly grasp Leraye's wrist and pull him away from it. No point letting him get close to it.

"Fraze, I think you have a safe place to keep that until we can decide what to do with it." Keng nodded at the mostly silver man, keeping their drag queen prisoner well back. "May I suggest we discuss the the diplomacy of what to do about this fellow after the demon attack has been averted? And what makes you think you can control- oh never mind, we haven't got time for this. The demons are right at our door-"

A large boom resounded over the group, drowning out the rest of her words. Luckily any security breaches had been averted this time around, so their force-sheild was still up... but for how much longer was yet to be seen. Sci-fi rules required that their integrity fail eventually for the sake of anything interesting ever happening, a rule only hand shields avoided as they usually were given numerous other draw-backs anyways.

"Point made."

-------

"We've managed to contact Dr. Billy in the labs and think we can grant you special access. We don't have much time before the bike alters time again so you'll have to work fast or else you could be speaking to eight of us next time."

"Understood. I'll do what I can."

"Thank you miss Ra-sorral.
Comdo. Kreegan!"

A typical green skin humanoid came through the door, and Ra-sorral took a moment to wonder that so many planets had evolved such similar bi-pedal self aware beings. Then the same green skin humanoid followed him out and she then marveled at how inconvenient it would be to not be able to control your own passage through time.

"Please escort the Ambassador to the labs." said all 4 of the twins at once.

"Yes sirs!" said both Comdo Kreegans in response. "This way miss."

[Amneiger]

Hunty's voice came quite clearly through the cameras in the armory, and the intercom system to there was still connected to the general network.

"I don't really think that giving them Leraye will calm them down. They said that they'd leave 'for now;' they didn't say anything about coming back later. Keng, my connection with the security center just went down again and it looks like somebody's trying to get to the research lab; could you tell them to get somebody down here to make sure that the other Leraye and Speck don't intercept whoever's trying to reach us?"



Outside, the defenders had taken advantage of the fact that they had advance warning of the demon attack. While a number of the turrets were still inoperable due to malfunctions from the time warp and had been shut down, Spacefleet had compensated by launching fighters to fill in the gaps.

[Fraze]

"You humans know nothing of what Leraye has done. I'd give you a lesson, but it's a waste on a dead man."
Fraze stifled a groan. Posturing. Once, just once, he'd like to be able to negotiate with a hostile force without all the puffing of chests and raising of hackles and flaring of tail feathers. Come to think of it, these might be far more than simple metaphors for some of these demons.

"I'll tell you what. If you release Leraye unharmed, then we will let you live... for now."
That was a bit better. Fraze was about to say something like "Gladly, take him off our hands, he's been nothing but trouble," but then realized this might be a show of weakness.
"We will take it under consideration," he replied instead. After a moment, he decided it would be best to do some posturing of his own, but put some real weight behind it this time. "And there is no need for threats, we already know the extent of your forces."
A carefully calculated pause for maximum impact. This would be a risk, but could benefit his side significantly. He put on a conversational tone, knowing and intending it to sound false. "Is that invisible girl with you? Tell her she can't hide from us. She's visible in the infrared, she'll be bright as a star to anyone with heat vision goggles. Even if she has better methods of staying hidden than that, there are lots of ways of finding a cloaked person."

He was interrupted by a tap on his shoulder. Great, the dark blue army wanted a piece of his suit, too. It could probably be done, but his own share would be only a third as thick as it usually was.
He breathed a sigh of relief as the crowd reached the armory, and the meepits' attention shifted to what must have looked like a pirates' paradise.
"Oooooh," he said at the sight of the shields. He probably didn't need one, but it never hurt. The thing strapped nicely to his arm, but what about...
Fraze unstrapped the shield generator, held it out at arm's length, and gave a swing. Several crates fell over when the shield hit them. Sure enough, it could be used as a melee weapon. Good, no one saw that. If they did, they were too intent on other things.
The sudden appearance of two alien officers was nothing new, but the appearance of two highly nervous alien officers was a sight, indeed. And...oh. Joy. The gem. At least it's accounted for now.
"Fraze, I think you have a safe place to keep that until we can decide what to do with it,", Keng spoke.
"Do indeed," he answered, fishing around in a pocket. He was considering giving Hunty a few quick tips on how voice intonations can affect diplomatic negotiations, and how this might help her get what she wanted in the future. Maybe later, when they had some time alone.

His skinsuit comm receiver hit a patch of static that sounded not unlike half a dozen people saying "squeeeeeeeeee!" At the same time, there was a large boom--which probably caused the static--as the demon attack began. After a moment, the suit adjusted itself to compensate for the new interference.

Fraze took the gem from Keng, dropped it in the box--noticing Leraye flinch as he did so--and closed the lid. "It seemed like most of the demons had shields of their own," he said to the group as a whole. "Ranged weapons were pretty ineffective, I had to rely mainly on melee combat. Probably should have said this earlier. Either we'll need to swing these shields as weapons--which is pretty crude--or rely more on melee weapons.
"Come to think of it," he added after a pause, "I've got a few still images saved from the combat. Can anyone with good knowledge of magic take a look at them? The more we know about their magic capabilities, the better. From what very little I know about magic, it seems like shield spells are usually done by single people at the middle of the spell. If we can identify these people--if there are any--that'd be especially useful."

[Cyborg]

(Well, now to bring up two things, hope no one minds.) " Melee weapons, cutlasses will have to do for now. Unless...Keng were you able to make those claws for me? The ones I asked for after you mentioned Spacefleet during your visit to the Weewoo. If they're ready they should be great for this. Magic though, I can only help if the magic is Earth related. Though if it's pretty basic magic, then I should be able to help a little with other types." Cyborg stated.

( For reference to the claws, check my SF profile.)